By Beth Duff-Brown, Bruce Goldman, Taylor Kubota, and Rebecca McClellan
Six Stanford scientists have been awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that recognize unconventional, boundary-pushing work focused on challenges in biomedical and behavioral research.
The six researchers who received grants this year are Andrew Beel, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Structural Biology in the Stanford School of Medicine; Michael Fischbach, associate professor of bioengineering in the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine, and of microbiology and immunology in the School of Medicine; Chris Garcia, professor of molecular and cellular physiology and of structural biology in the School of Medicine; Sherri Rose, associate professor of health policy in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the School of Medicine; Serena Sanulli, associate professor of genetics in the School of Medicine; and Mark Skylar-Scott, assistant professor of bioengineering in the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine.
The High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program is part of the NIH Common Fund, which, according to the NIH’s press release, oversees programs that “pursue major scientific opportunities and gaps throughout the research enterprise, are of significant importance to NIH, and require collaborations across the agency to succeed.” The goal is to encourage investigators to work on research that may otherwise face difficulties getting funded in more traditional ways. This year, the NIH program has awarded 103 grants totaling about $285 million over five years.